Menu

Me in my element. Element ME.

Thought 27. Metamorphosis (of a year)

This was an idea suggested by someone very important to me. (Jellybro,this one’s for you!). However, it took me an actual year to write about it simply because the nature of topic lends itself to such variations in meaning. Whatever I write lends itself to your, the reader’s subjective imaginations as well as mine. Allow me to attempt.

Metamorphosis. A keyword I come across when I think of its meaning is usually ‘transformation’ – mostly in appearance and/or function. I don’t mean to make this purely intellectual or scientific or even that serious. But as a writer, or someone who writes as much as she can, ‘metamorphosis’ is extremely important.

Metamorphosis occurs on so many different levels to a writer. For example, there can be extreme transformation in the way one writes. Although I would like to believe in a gradual change in the way someone writes, it has often turned out to be wrong. Every writer tends to have this itch at the back of their neck , the want to change what they write, how they write, to experiment. And most times, there is complete transformation, a blooming into something greater than themselves and their past work. Even if it’s just one shot in the dark. And that act of bloom changes them completely. Experiencing and being a catalyst in that transformation themselves, changes their continued writing thereafter.

It also occurs with the way a writer approaches their work. Whichever emotional base they depended their work on may get questioned or may completely shatter. Post which, the eyes with which they see their work change. The complete view. They may be able to step back or step closer to see the details. They transform the way they view their own work. And more often than not, analyse it for themselves, allow themselves to sink in the moment that they wrote the piece in. Many writers also find their previous work completely unreadable and are utterly disgusted by it, including me. The emotional turmoil they were in or the waning of the stimulus that was the reason of the piece itself seems like a distant dream. It seems muddled, and the writer wonders in which state of mind they would have written that in.

And just like how metamorphosis suggests a magical process , an alchemy caused change in the make-up of something, it is indeed so for the writer as well as readers. As one goes through another writer’s works, we travel through the range of experiences, emotions, thoughts the writer had. We see the writer’s attempt to drown themselves in their work. They become their work. And in essence, a metamorphosis in their writing and the way they view their work becomes a metamorphosis in them.

This concept is such a dense one to talk about, for a 20 something common writer like mine. To write of personal transformations makes it preachy and requires a strength, a courage that I cannot muster as of now, either to talk of it or to experience it. To urge for a public transformation, even more so. So I wrote of it the only way I know how – as a writer. A shift, a breaking out of consciousness and appreciation for such has occurred to me only once I got writing. So let me allow this to be a homage to it, if I may.